The evolution of packet communications has led to packet networks supporting various types of media services, including data, audio, video, and voice services. These services generally require vastly different resources to support acceptable levels of quality. Further, there is a movement to control the allocation of resources to subscribers based on service agreements defining different levels of service, as well as requirements of the requested services.
Since network resources, and in particular bandwidth, are limited, there is a need to keep track of those resources that have been allocated, control the allocation of resources, and prevent unauthorized use of resources. Unfortunately, certain types of communication sessions are difficult to control and can lead to excessive use, if not unknown use, of network resources. For example, peer-to-peer (P2P) sessions between communication clients are difficult to control, since network control entities cannot effectively detect peer-to-peer sessions or limit the resources used in supporting the peer-to-peer sessions. In many instances, where authorized resources represent most if not all of the available resources in a network, a peer-to-peer session may use sufficient resources to negatively impact the quality of the authorized sessions since the peer-to-peer session is causing the network capacity to be exceeded.
As such, there is a need for an efficient and effective technique to identify and control such communication sessions according to subscriber agreements or network policies.